Safe Harbor Financial to Buy Abaca and Expand Cannabis FinTech Platform

Safe Harbor Financial, a facilitator of financial services for the regulated cannabis industry, has entered into an agreement to acquire cannabis FinTech platform Abaca for $30 million and said it will create comprehensive banking solutions for the industry’s operators.

The deal will combine the specialized financial and treasury services available through Abaca’s digital platform with the wide range of financial services delivered by Safe Harbor, according to a Monday (Oct. 31) press release.

“With their ecosystem of cannabis banking and finance platform, proprietary technology, strong financial institution and banking relationships, and experienced founder-led management team, we believe Abaca is the ideal platform to help us take a large step forward in scaling our capabilities and service offerings in building the complete cannabis FinTech ecosystem,” Safe Harbor Founder and CEO Sundie Seefried said in the release.

The enhanced Safe Harbor FinTech platform created by this deal will now offer cannabis operators desktop and mobile banking, treasury management, payment processing, cash handling and logistics. In addition, a new payroll service will be added later this quarter, according to the press release.

For Safe Harbor, the acquisition also adds 300 accounts, expands its financial institution relationships and, upon closing, will expand its operations in more than 30 states, the release stated.

“Following its recent NASDAQ listing and key additions to the executive team, Safe Harbor is positioned to be the leader in compliant financing and banking offerings to the regulated operating U.S. cannabis industry nationwide,” Abaca Co-founder and CEO Dan Roda said in the release. “Joining forces with Safe Harbor enables the Abaca team to better advance our mission of empowering the cannabis community with essential financial services and innovative, affordable solutions.”

As PYMNTS reported Sept. 21, the cannabis industry is seeing rising demand for B2B payments, cash flow and accounts receivable services as well.